[...] HERCULES targets the lower layers of the autonomous driving computational stack, by allowing workload intensive real-time applications to predictably run on next-generation heterogeneous platforms. These days a heavy burden is imposed on OEMs to comply with functional safety standards specified by automotive (ISO 26262) and avionic (DO-178) regulations. ‘Freedom from interference’ is one of the main challenges for the certification of multicore platforms in these domains. This requires system providers to provide sufficient evidence on the worst-case latencies that may be introduced to safety-critical modules due to contention on shared hardware and software resources.

The HERCULES framework aims at supporting auto motive, avionic and industrial automation applications featuring heavy parallel workloads composed of concurrent and recurring tasks requiring tight real-time guarantees. Beside the autonomous driving system by Magneti Marelli, there are two use-cases from the avionic domain: a camera-based tracking system with online machine learning support provided by Airbus, and a control system for autonomous aerial drones from Italian company PITOM. The HERCULES consortium is also collaborating with companies in the industrial automation domain to validate the framework for industrial 4.0 applications.